It is common for organizations, such as sports leagues, to register large numbers of individuals to participate in the activities of the organization. Due to the large number of individuals, coordinating the registration of the individual participants can be time consuming and cumbersome. For example, a typical youth sports league may include over 2000 participants. Registration of the participants requires determination of the age, gender, and address of each of the individual participants. In addition, league organizers must collect league fees. The time required to register the participants and collect the fees can be prohibitively great.
Once all of the participants are registered, the organization (league) must generate team rosters which include all of the participants. Generation of team rosters requires grouping the participants by the above listed factors of age, gender, and address, plus other factors including participant preference and experience.
Once team rosters have been generated, the league organizers must generate game schedules for all of the teams. Generation of schedules requires matching team rosters which fall into similar groupings of participants. Generally, the matching includes configuring the game schedule so that every team roster of a particular grouping plays every other team roster within the grouping. Typically, the generation of schedules also includes consideration of playing field availability, season length, holidays and other time constraints.
Typically, participation in the activities of a sports league requires the purchase of products which are required for participation. For example, participation in a basketball league may require the purchase of proper shoes or athletic apparel. It can be difficult for league administrators to properly advise participants of the required products.
In the case of youth sports leagues, most of the league administration is performed by volunteer parents who only have a limited amount of time to dedicate to league administration. Therefore, league administration resources can be very limited. Typically, it is nearly impossible for a league's limited volunteer staff, using antiquated tools and communication methods, to respond to all participant's requests for league information, questions and concerns.
The administrative efforts required to register participants, collect league fees, generate team rosters, generate team roster schedules, suggest product purchases and answer general questions is enormous. Coupled with the fact that league administrators are typically volunteers with limited amounts of free time and administrative systems, makes league administration nearly impossible.
It is desirable to have a organizational network system which allows a plurality of individuals to easily register as members of an organization. It is desirable that the organizational network system have the capability to receive information from the individual members, and generate membership groupings and generate a schedule of events and activities of the organization based upon the information received, and automatically communicate the groupings and schedule to the members. Additionally, it is desirable that the network system be able to automatically provide the members with information about products which may be useful to the members during the course of the activities of the organization.